HR 2016 Salary Guide

The HR 2016 Salary Guide covers salary ranges for professionals working in generalist human resources, recruitment and talent acquisition, training and development, compensation and benefits and in other HR positions.

HR has evolved significantly within the talent acquisition space, in a number of multinational businesses in Asia moving the in-house recruitment function to use either: a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) or a Managed Service Outsourcing (MSP) model for cost saving purposes. Furthermore, banks continue to offshore operational HR teams in order to reduce costs.

There has been an increase in China-based firms acquiring businesses globally and using Hong Kong as a key hub as their global headquarters; this has created HR director level opportunities with a global remit. Such China firms require professionals with mergers and acquisitions, as well as HR transformation project experience. They will also look for professionals with international HR experience, and professionals with a strong understanding of the Chinese culture and fluency in Mandarin are essential. Additionally this has presented more mobility opportunities for locally based candidates to gain experience working outside of the Asia region.

Typically HR professionals are dominated by females. Within large multinationals particularly in the banking industry diversity is a growing topic and whilst they will look to hire the best candidates in the market for the job, more efforts are being put in place to consider and encourage more men in to the discipline to better balance the gender mix.

At an HR operational level, professionals tend to be locally based Chinese professionals, as having knowledge of the Hong Kong labour law is important. At the senior level, professionals from more developed markets, such as Europe, Australia or the USA, may be recruited to introduce HR best practices. However, in contrast to this, there are as many businesses that will look to attract locally based candidates with the Chinese language skills to lead their HR function depending on the growth market in the Asia region.

Permanent positions dominate Hong Kong’s HR market with contracting positions on the increase as the overall HR sector continues to develop. Being a female dominated discipline, a proportion of contract positions are created for maternity cover. However, there are seasonal volumes within specialist disciplines such as campus recruitment, compensation and benefits, talent acquisition where by contract positions are created to help manage such volumes.

In 2016, salaries are expected to remain stable, and any increments will be between 5%-10%. For external moves, salary increases remain at a general market rate of 10%-15%. Professionals in the talent and organisational development are generally highly sought-after and achieve salary increments of up to 20%.